The Grand Strategy of Philip II [Paperback]

Professor Geoffrey Parker (Author), Geoffrey Parker (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0300082738 | ISBN-13: 978-0300082739 | Publication Date: April 1, 2000

From 1556 until his death in 1598, Philip II of Spain ruled the first global empire in history. This book investigates the strengths and weaknesses of Philip's strategic vision, the priorities that underlay his policies, the practices and prejudices that influneced his decision-making, and the external factors that affected the achievements of his goals. Geoffrey Parker begins by examining the defining charactersitics of Spain's strategic culture: the king's disticntive system of government; the "information overload" that threatened to engulf it; and the various strategic priorities and assumptions used to overcome the disparity between aims and means. He then exploits the surviving documentation - from the Hasburgs, their allies, and their adversaries - on the formation of strategy in three crucial case studies: Philip's unsuccessful efforts to maintain his authority in the Netherlands; his defective peacetime management of foreign relations with Scotland and England; and his failed Armada campaign against England. Finally, Parker examines the small but fatal flaws in the execution of Philip's Grand Strategy, assesses the reponse of the king and his ministers to their failures, and questions whether the outcome might have been different with other policy options, another ruler, or a different strategic culture. Pointing to modern parallels between Philip's problems of governance and those facing Hitler and Churchill, or Kennedy and Johnson, this book provides a commentary on the nature of empires and the decision-making processes of the great powers.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In the second half of the 16th century, Spain's Philip II ruled over the original empire on which the sun never set. In Europe alone, he held power over Portugal, the Netherlands, and about half of Italy (including Sicily, the Duchy of Milan, and the Kingdom of Naples). On the African shores of the Mediterranean, he controlled Tunis and Tangier; further south were Guinea and Angola. There were holdings in India and--well, naturally--the Philippines, and in the Western hemisphere, there were Florida, Cuba, Brazil, Peru, and "New Spain," which occupied the modern American Southwest and all of Mexico and Central America.

Most historians have claimed that, in overseeing this empire, Philip had no "Grand Strategy," but instead occupied himself with perpetual reaction to events. But Geoffrey Parker believes that there was a "strategic culture" that influenced Philip's reign, and he makes extensive use of surviving correspondence from the period to demonstrate how that culture revealed itself in Spain's attempts to hang onto the Netherlands and in its relationship--diplomatic and martial--to England. The Grand Strategy of Philip II is a richly detailed history, which will reward any student of modern statecraft with its insights into geopolitical power. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Between 1556 and 1598, King Philip II of Spain was the ruler of the world's first global empire, controlling much of Europe and America. In this volume, Parker, a prolific author and noted historian of Europe and particularly Spain, examines the strategy behind the policy and the decisions leading to Philip's accumulation of power. Beyond a general examination of strategy, the author studies three aspects of Philip's reign: his efforts to maintain authority in the Netherlands, his management of foreign relations with Scotland and England, and his attempt to conquer England between 1585 and 1588. Parker concludes that Philip's failures resulted not from a lack of strategy but from small factors, including his own idiosyncrasies, that played a disproportionate part in frustrating his plans. This superb volume adds much to our understanding of European history and will be of interest to most academic libraries with collections in that area.AMark L. Grover, Brigham Young Univ. Lib., Provo, UT
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 472 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (April 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300082738
• ISBN-13: 978-0300082739
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #513,404 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars History that illuminates the near past and present, June 6, 2001

By 

Bryan Gibby (Madrid, Spain) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Grand Strategy of Philip II (Paperback)

Geoffrey Parker's study of Philip II is a landmark. In this penetrating analysis, Parker has successfully distilled and tied together four decades of modern scholarship on strategy, decision making, and organization theory with an original evaluation of Philip of Spain's motivations, priorities, and execution. Gone are the nationalistic generalizations and the structural excuses. Structural and institutional factors get coverage, but the real story is in the man at the top, who had to make the decisions, good and bad.

Parker starts with a discussion on the strategic culture surrounding Philip, to include his "strategic inheritence" from his father, Charles V, the massive information network over which Philip presided (and the irresistable temptation to micro-manage), and the 'messianic imperialism' context that was of Philip's own making.

Messianic imperialism is the backbone for the rest of the book, which deals with the formation and the execution of grand strategy. Parker clearly evaluates Philip's strategy v. the Dutch and the English. For reasons that he explained early in his preface, the Mediterranean theater gets shorter coverage, but it is clear that the Med. concerns were never far from Philip's mind. The French Huguenots also don't get as detailed treatment as they could have gotten, but Parker's summation of the results of Philip's policy towards France is still satisfying.

Parker makes many allusions to strategic and policy issues of the recent past, and it is clear that Philip's problems were not all the different in scope, if not in scale, than those faced by political and military leaders today. Philip's inability to discipline himself to focus on one event to see it through to completion, his inabiltiy to keep himself from micromanaging decisions from over 600 miles away, and his inability to see past his divine mission to perceive reality will all strike familiar chords.

Bottom line: Great history, great interpretation, great analysis. It has got to be a classic in the field.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A rare book, January 11, 2007

By 

T. J. Graczewski "tgraczewski" (Burlingame, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Grand Strategy of Philip II (Paperback)

"The Grand Strategy of Philip II" is a rare book. On the one hand, it is a convincing scholarly reassessment of Spanish imperial policy during the pivotal late 16th century. In that sense, the book is written to the high standards of the academy: exhaustive primary research - much of it in the original Spanish, Latin, Italian and French - and close consideration of competing theories from previous, notable works on the period. On the other hand, the book is an exemplary work of modern strategic studies, with a dash of business school case study analysis. This is a piece of academic history that cites such distinguished and diverse authorities as Peter Drucker, Carl von Clausewitz and John Lewis Gaddis and uses a broad range of historical analogies - from the Vietnam War, the Second World War and the US Civil War - to illuminate and contrast critical points. The end result is one of the more compelling works on strategy written in the past few decades.

Geoffrey Parker very much wrote this book in response to Paul Kennedy's poor treatment of Philip II and the decline of the Spanish empire in Kennedy's enormously popular and influential 1987 book "The rise and fall of the Great Powers." On the surface, Parker seeks to refute the conventional academic wisdom that Philip II had no grand strategy in any sense of the term. While the issue of "grand strategy" is discussed throughout, the book really revolves around Philip's planned 1588 invasion of England, which featured the legendary Spanish Armada and ended in utter catastrophe before it really began.

The book is broken into three more-or-less equal components. The first section offers a fascinating overview of the world Philip lived in and the unmanageable world of paperwork and decision-making that he created for himself. Parker is none too kind to Philip in this book. Most of the challenges and failures of Philip's half-century reign Parker attributes to Philip's insistence on the centralization and compartmentalization of all information and decision-making (Parker openly compares his style and system to that of Hitler). Parker suggests that if Philip had been born 500 years later in similarly privileged circumstances, he might have been an awful CEO of a family-owned business. One of his great faults, in Parker's estimation, was his "zero-defects mentality" - the fear of failure that so dominated his actions that it paralyzed his ability to act on anything but certain knowledge.

Parker describes stunning scenes of Philip working 18-hours-a-day like some Wall Street attorney, hunched over a mountain of papers and embroiled in the most arcane details of imperial appointments and financial management (of which he had little understanding).

Much has been made of the long time it took for messages to travel from place to place in the 16th century. Parker argues that it was more the uncertainty of communications that presented the truly vexing problem of the age, not necessarily the long time it took for information to travel. For instance, a message from Venice to Paris could take anywhere from one to six weeks to arrive. It was the unknown margin that led leaders to fits of despair and uncertainty. Finally, Parker raises an issue in this first section that forms a central part of his indictment against Philip II - his profound and unshakeable conviction that the mission of Spain and that of God were one in the same, and thus any obstacle or shortfall could be overcome by the miraculous intervention of the Lord himself, a phenomenon that Parker calls "messianic imperialism." The issue of religion - Catholic vs. Protestant - trumped all other considerations and Philip consistently and confidently undertook any effort that involved upholding or reclaiming the faith with the sincere expectation of a Moses-parting-the-Red-Sea style miracle to carry him to victory.

The second section is a review of the situation in the Netherlands and foreign relations with England's Elizabeth Tudor. As background, these chapters are necessary and highly informative, but they aren't nearly as absorbing and exciting to the layman as the first and final sections.

The third and final section offers a focused treatment of the question: "Why did the Armada fail?" For contemporary strategists, this section is by far the most compelling. He addresses in turn the three topics most often cited as the reasons for the failure of the Armada to link with the ground forces under the duke of Parma in the Netherlands and then to launch the cross channel conquest of England.

First, Parker addresses the fact that the planned invasion of England was "the worst kept secret in Europe." Parker likens the intelligence situation facing Elizabeth to that of the US government before Pearl Harbor. Yes, much of the enemy's plan was compromised, but the high noise-to-signals ratio and the repeated false warnings of impending invasion meant that strategic surprise, especially the well-concealed intended landing site of Kent, was still achieved. Like the FDR administration in 1941, Elizabeth knew everything, and yet knew nothing.

Second, and perhaps most dramatically given the generally sober and academic tone of the rest of the book, Parker vigorously defends the actions and preparations of the invasion forces commander in the Netherlands, the duke of Parma. He argues that Parma achieved unparalleled logistical feats to get his 27,000-man invasion force in place and ready to embark within a day-and-a-half, so any notion that the plan failed because Parma either intentionally sabotaged the invasion or was incompetent must be rejected, if one accepts Parker's reasoning.

Finally, Parked concludes that the superior English naval capabilities - better ships, bigger guns, more effective leadership, better tactics, more experience in general - ultimately doomed the Armada and thus the invasion plans to failure. Everything hinged on the ability of the Spanish to establish sea control in the Channel to get Parma's forces to England, and the British naval superiority made that basic objective nearly impossible. The British advantage is very much described in terms that we today would refer to a "revolution in military affairs " (RMA). Indeed, Max Boot used the defeat of the Armada as one of his case studies in his recent, excellent review of the RMA argument in "War Made New." Parker writes that the Spanish fully anticipated English tactics and appreciated their advantages in long-range gunnery and maneuverability, and were simply unable to overcome them.

Parker sums up the Armada's failure and Philip's direct role in causing the disaster this way: "Philip's flawed 'management style' frustrated the Armada's success far more than the loss of secrecy, the lack of communication between the two theater commanders, and the technical differences between the two fleets. His refusal to delegate, his 'zero-defects mentality', his self-generated information overload and his messianic outlook produced grave strategic errors that rendered operational success almost impossible."

26 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect!, September 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Grand Strategy of Philip II (Hardcover)

Some people still insist military tactics apply to business. Once I took a public relations course, and our textbook was Clausewitz's treaty on war. If you want to avoid mistakes, to design a sound and practical strategy for whatever your business, then read Geoffrey Parker. In this book, Philip II is judged through the lenses of planning, and most importantly, of results and achievements. Why did Philip failed in his great enterprise? To make decisions is not only a matter of information -Philip was well informed of affairs- but of judgement, passion, and careful coordination with those who execute decisions.